But this was not another instance of a white cop shooting an unarmed black man.

In this case, the slain suspect, 23-year-old Sylville K. Smith, was armed with an illegal firearm that had been used in a burglary. He allegedly ran from police after a traffic stop and refused to obey orders to drop his gun.

Furthermore, the officer who shot Smith is black, according to Milwaukee’s police chief.

So if a black cop shot a potentially dangerous black criminal, what was all the rioting about? Why did rioters chant “Black power!” and attempt to beat up every white person they saw?

“It’s all kabuki now: Everyone knows the drama, everyone knows their role, everyone knows their lines, everyone knows how it is going to turn out,” said Colin Flaherty, an award-winning writer and reporter who chronicled black mob violence in his book “White Girl Bleed a Lot.” “Maybe the family will get paid. Maybe not.

“But soon there will be lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Calls for better police-community relations. Important people will issue earnest documents and make serious pronouncements. One month after that it will be accepted that this widespread black criminality in Milwaukee is really the fault of white racism.”

The scary part, according to Flaherty, is that Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and their political and media surrogates have spent the past several months blaming “subconscious” or “unconscious” white racism for the problems of the black community.

“If it is subconscious or unconscious, how do you fix that?” Flaherty wondered.

Jeff Roorda, a retired police officer and four-term Missouri state representative, noted the Milwaukee protesters smashed and burned police cars and threw bricks at the police. It’s part of what Roorda calls “The War on Police,” which is the title of his forthcoming book.

“There are people that are mad that we shoot back, but they can bully politicians, they can cajole the media, but police officers are always going to defend themselves and others, and all of the rioting and all of the attempts to manipulate the story and manipulate society are not going to work on law enforcement,” Roorda told WND.

The former officer, who now serves as the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers Association and writes a WND column, chided Black Lives Matter for protesting the death of a black criminal while ignoring the life of a black officer.

“What about the black life of this police officer who, had he not acted, probably would have been killed?” Roorda asked. “And this kid (Smith) wasn’t some honor roll student innocently walking home from school – this is a kid that’s terrorizing the neighborhood. If he hasn’t already killed some other folks in his neighborhood, he was on the track to doing that sort of thing.

“So these are the types of people police officers should be expected to take off the street. This officer did everything right: he followed his instincts, he encountered a dangerous armed felon and he acted accordingly, and yet still there’s hell to pay for the city of Milwaukee.”

Flaherty believes some black people can’t admit some police shootings are justified because there is too much money at stake in the racial grievance industry.

“Everybody wants to get paid,” Flaherty said. “In Milwaukee, we see black political figures defending the rioters, predicting more unless some unnamed people create these unnamed government programs.”

It was local Alderman Khalif Rainey who, at a news conference after the initial riots, warned downtown Milwaukee could face more violence if issues facing African Americans were not addressed.

“Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening?” Rainey asked. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children.

“Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away.”

Roorda believes the Milwaukee riots represent the ongoing effort to vilify law enforcement, but he thinks it’s only a proxy war in a much larger struggle.

“Law enforcement make a convenient target because they are essentially the only representatives of government who will step foot in these urban war zones,” the former officer said. “But this is an attack on our country and on our way of life. The cops are just a scapegoat in this proxy war.”

Roorda noted the zeal with which so many of Milwaukee’s black residents rushed into the streets to protest before they knew all the facts of the case.

“Before they knew the race of the police officer, they were already burning buildings and burning cars,” he said. “I mean, this is a revolution, and it’s not a righteous cause.”

Flaherty fears black urban riots like those in Milwaukee, Baltimore and Ferguson will remain a part of American society for the foreseeable future.

“Black riots will be a fixture as long as they are allowed to be,” Flaherty said. “As long as reporters and public officials ignore, deny, condone, excuse, encourage and even lie about black criminality and how it is wildly out of proportion.”

Roorda similarly believes the media and elected officials need to start being honest about the facts of these cases in order to escape the vicious cycle of police shootings and urban riots.

“If we would just be honest about what’s happening in these situations, I don’t think we’d see anything like we’re seeing,” Roorda offered. “But the fact that ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ or ‘I can’t breathe’ or ‘rough ride,’ or whatever the battle cry of the day is, immediately takes hold and is embraced by the media and too many politicians – that’s how we end up in the situation we’re in.”